Research in brief:  Eye remember it well: Eye movements affect the vividness of your emotional memories

Can eye movement reduce trauma? eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) has shown that people retrieving traumatic events while making 10–20 lateral eye movements, experienced less trauma than did those who simply reported the traumatic event without eye movement (see article on EMDR on p. 361). Students who either looked at a computer screen, tapped their fingers or followed a symbol across a computer screen with their eyes also reported significantly less vivid imagery of autobiographical events in the eye movement condition; images we re most vivid in the control condition. The results suggest that visuospatial working memory is disrupted by eye movement, reducing the vividness of the recollection. However, EMDR suggests that future recollections of the event should also be less vivid.

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English

Neil Martin

Martin, N. (2001, July). Research in brief: Eye remember it well: Eye movements affect the vividness of your emotional memories. The Psychologist, 14(7), 376